Nothing sarcastic in my reply, but I will indulge your rant ;- ). This is not economic grievances thread, that would be one section above (General CG discussion).

3960X will come just slightly bit more than 3950X + 1920X. Unless you absolutely need second machine (but you already have those Xeon builds). It's not just about "cores". 3960X is faster than 3950X + 1920X, there has been two generations since the one. 16 core of 1st gen ZEN, is almost the same as 8 cores of 3rd Gen ZEN2.

But it's going to be much more useful to you because of:

1) expansibility (having only to increase memory on one PC, not two, and memory will get lot more expensive soon). What if you'll need 32GB ram? With 3960X you will only buy 32GB, with 3950X + 1920X you will need 2x32GB,etc. Anything you might save right now, you will lose over the longer period of following years.2) useful performance - Faster Interactive, is far more useful to productivity than comparatively slow Distributed rendering.3) resell value. The 1920X is not something you will be able to sell even year from now. I can't even sell any of my 2990WX, no one wants them.

If you don't have the budget for more than 3950X, than buy only 3950X, but don't buy second 1st gen Ryzen just because. It doesn't make economic sense, which you allude being the most important factor.

Also for a 1920x, you need an x399 board, not a B450-F as you wrote. Count that the board alone will cost you at least another 150-200 euros more than what you actually wrote :).I have a 1920x in the office also a 1950x. I would completely advise against buying those they are outdated right now...If budget is your concern keep in mind that a 3900x with a b450 board is going to cost you the same as a 1920x with an x399 board. The performance of the 3900x exceeds the 1950x even though it has 4 cores less:).

Also for a 1920x, you need an x399 board, not a B450-F as you wrote. Count that the board alone will cost you at least another 150-200 euros more than what you actually wrote :).

This is very good argument..and main reason the 1920X has been discounted to almost being free for more than half year.

Right now there is only very small specific niche of users for whom X399 + 1920X make sense and those are people who need all the HEDT PCI-E lanes (for file-server, addon-cards,etc..) but don't need the performance. For those, Ryzen lacks PCI-e, and TRX40 is too expensive. A cheaper alternative to buying used server from eBay, although it mostly comes down to very similar price.

Yes, I would actually consider Threadripper 1st or 2nd gen only if it was an upgrade of the cpu and I already had all the other parts. In my case, I have a 1920x and a 1950x and I am actually waiting for the 2990/70wx to drop in price swap the cpu's and just put them in the farm. Or I will sell them at some point :D.

I am kind of envious of all the people who skipped gen 1 and 2 entirely and just went straight for gen 3. Pretty much the best move you can do as a new buyer/customer. It's just mindboggling how gen 3 wipes the floor with gen 1 and 2. Difference between gen 1 and 2 was kind of negligible...

Yes Juraj, it seems to be stable so far. 8x16gb running full speed now I turned on XMP Profile in BIOS. I’ll be rendering on it a few hours tomorrow and will post if I find any issues!

I would try running something like memtest for a few hours to double check stability. Actually trying running a demanding game as I've had games crash a system due to unstable memory timings even after running memtest for 5+ hours with zero errors (others have found the same on various OC'ing forums). Interestingly rendering doesn't seem to tax memory as hard as gaming, so you could techically be running an unstable memory OC and not even know it (until a problem rares it's head right when you don't want it to on a critical overnight render).

I would suggest using Ryzen Dram calculator + Typhoon burner to hone in on rock solid settings. For me the 3600mhz CL17 XMP settings appeared stable at first (128gb kit), but then I would get random app crashes, and confirmed with memory errors after 5 minutes of memtest. After manually inputting the tweaked Ryzen DRAM settings for Hynix DJR into the bios I have better than XMP timings and am fully stable in memtest, games and rendering.

I would suggest using Ryzen Dram calculator + Typhoon burner to hone in on rock solid settings. For me the 3600mhz CL16 XMP settings appeared stable at first (128gb kit), but then I would get random app crashes, and confirmed with memory errors after 5 minutes of memtest. After manually inputting the tweaked Ryzen DRAM settings for Hynix DJR into the bios I have better than XMP timings and am fully stable in memtest, games and rendering.

The calculator worked that well for you even with 128 GB ? Very nice to hear!

So what exact kit is this? And how were the XMP and adjusted settings differing?

Stock XMP settings are CL17-19-19-39 with some pretty wacky subtimings. I've attached the timings that I'm running with Ryzen DRAM calculator, however I've bumped my tRFC to 540 as 480 was a bit too low to be fully stable. Would be interesting to see if anyone manages to get 256gb working at 3600mhz using this!

Don't quote me on this but someone mentioned that all odd timings get rounded to the higher even number so CL17 would get rounded to CL18 with geardown mode enabled.

Thanks! Yeah Gear Down mode rounds up and enables stable Command Rate 1T. Kinda murky what all it affects but since it improves stability, I would definitely keep it on.

The newest Trident (the current newest, because "newer newest" will come somewhere in March/April/May together with the Crucial kit I ordered, which I believe will be the same binning of "newest" (lol) M-E dies.G.Skill already posted a screenshot of validated 256GB 3600 CL16 running on TRX40 Asus ZE-II Alpha, so I am really hopeful that will apply to Aorus as well. But G.Skill did the same last year with 256GB 3200 CL14 and such kit never arrived.So imho it was stable enough for Twitter bragging only ;- ).

Also i want to add another Noctua NF-A15 PWM fan for CPU , but from my experience with another 3970X configuration, this will cover 2 slots of RAM, so you will have just 6. This happned with AORUS TRX40 PRO WIFI. I dont know if TRX40 MASTER its bigger.

Also i want to add another Noctua NF-A15 PWM fan for CPU , but from my experience with another 3970X configuration, this will cover 2 slots of RAM, so you will have just 6. This happned with AORUS TRX40 PRO WIFI. I dont know if TRX40 MASTER its bigger.

I can say that the Aorus Master fits into the Fractal Define R6. It's snug but I converted the layout to open and there's plenty of airflow. I settled on this as it had better thermals in reviews than the Vector RS. A bigger case is never a bad thing for airflow though.The heat sink is tall on the NH-U14S TR4-SP3 that you can attach the fans slightly above the RAM. See image.

You can see that on my photo one page back as well with what are not even low-profile memory modules. Also..with 2x A15 fans. But I tested that configuration one time before already and the result was the same this time, there is no thermal improvement (after all just 10 cm to the left is Case Exhaust fan again, so it's basically 3x vs 2x. The heatsink is too narrow and it creates very annoying resonating turbulence. Noctua A12x25 (120mm) fan would probably give better result for this situation and with much nicer sound profile.(It's incredible how much more advanced the A12x25 is compared to A14/A15. Even at same noise level...the noise is super pleasant, low-pitched humming car engine, not high pitched jet engine.)

Is the Great Wall M1200 PSU something you already have? If not, I would suggest changing to something more reputable like Seasonic Prime series (or Corsair AXi which is also made by Seasonic except for 1600W top model).Any reputable brand (BeQuiet,..) or OEM (SuperFlower) works but your choice is bit obscure. High-end PSU is paramount to stability of PC, but esp. for 4000 euro CPU.

Any reason for going with 5400 RPM HDDs ? Are these just for back-up? Because otherwise they're far too slow,..even for backup.

I've now tested the 3990X across quite a lot of my scenes, and found following to be interesting from looking up at Distributed rendering numbers. My farm is made up or 2698v4 xeon nodes and 2990WXs.

The 3990X is very consistent, the ratio with 2698v4 Xeon node is almost constant. Whereas 2990WX is fluctuating by a lot in ratio with 2698v4, sometimes beating it by more than 30perc. (like it should) and sometimes getting on the same level.I am not sure what exactly is the cause of fluctuating performance of 2990WX in regards to scene features of Corona ( So I mean the Corona side, not the NUMA nodes and half-bandwidth access to them ), but it's no longer the case with 3990X.

The performance of 3990X is always exactly where it should be, be it simple or complex scene. When 2990WX came out, I found the reviewers bashing the decision to connect only two dies to memory controller to be far too harsh, but judging back, that was really poor decision on AMD's part, and it's questionable whether they needed to do it, or it was intentional crippling to not cannibalize Epyc.

But the 3rd gen are flawless products, what Zen should have been from beginning. Can't even foresee what Zen3 will bring (since I think they're skipping Zen2+ right?).

Thanks! Yeah Gear Down mode rounds up and enables stable Command Rate 1T. Kinda murky what all it affects but since it improves stability, I would definitely keep it on.

The newest Trident (the current newest, because "newer newest" will come somewhere in March/April/May together with the Crucial kit I ordered, which I believe will be the same binning of "newest" (lol) M-E dies.G.Skill already posted a screenshot of validated 256GB 3600 CL16 running on TRX40 Asus ZE-II Alpha, so I am really hopeful that will apply to Aorus as well. But G.Skill did the same last year with 256GB 3200 CL14 and such kit never arrived.So imho it was stable enough for Twitter bragging only ;- ).

Did you adjust all Voltages as Rec as well?

Noice, definitely keep us posted when you get the kits. Yeah I'm using the recommended voltages with no issues so far.

You can see that on my photo one page back as well with what are not even low-profile memory modules. Also..with 2x A15 fans. But I tested that configuration one time before already and the result was the same this time, there is no thermal improvement (after all just 10 cm to the left is Case Exhaust fan again, so it's basically 3x vs 2x. The heatsink is too narrow and it creates very annoying resonating turbulence. Noctua A12x25 (120mm) fan would probably give better result for this situation and with much nicer sound profile.(It's incredible how much more advanced the A12x25 is compared to A14/A15. Even at same noise level...the noise is super pleasant, low-pitched humming car engine, not high pitched jet engine.)

Is the Great Wall M1200 PSU something you already have? If not, I would suggest changing to something more reputable like Seasonic Prime series (or Corsair AXi which is also made by Seasonic except for 1600W top model).Any reputable brand (BeQuiet,..) or OEM (SuperFlower) works but your choice is bit obscure. High-end PSU is paramount to stability of PC, but esp. for 4000 euro CPU.

Any reason for going with 5400 RPM HDDs ? Are these just for back-up? Because otherwise they're far too slow,..even for backup.

Then I will add an extra A12.I choose that PSU because I need to buy everything just from one store and the 1200w Corsair its double the price (around 500 euro). They have Corsair Professional Series Platinum HX1000i but I'm not sure 1000w is enough because i'm planning to add an extra RTX 2080.HDD are fore backups, but you are right, it's better to switch to 7200.Also i'm not sure about 512gb A-DATA SSD- PCI, M.2, PCI Express 3.0 , even it has a lot of good reviews.